Summer Camp

Exploring outer space, creating a circus and learning about things that fly are just some of the activities planned by the Tredyffrin Township summer camp program. The program, which has been operating for more than a decade, has two programs, one for preschool children ages 3 to 5 and one for elementary school children ages 6 to 11. Sherri Ruppe, coordinator for the camp, said the preschool program would be behind the Strafford Library. "The preschool camp is stressing group activities, arts and crafts and music," she said.

At first glance, Camp Carrousel looks like a typical summer camp with children singing, playing games and doing arts and crafts. But a closer look reveals games with unusual sounding words - dans le jardin, laitue and a singing Napoleon avec cinq cent soldats. Soldats (soldiers)? Laitue (lettuce)? Dans le jardin (in the garden)? Camp Carrousel has an international flair for its campers - because everything is in French. "Bonjour, bonjour," shouts Josette Pestalozzi, one of the teachers, as she greets the children with a hearty handshake upon their arrival at the camp at Shipley School in Bryn Mawr.

My daughter is only 8, but she has already felt the cruel sting of rejection. "At this time, we have acceptances out for all spaces available in both sessions of Creative Campers," said the letter from the Holton-Arms School's summer camp. The day camp offered to put my daughter on the waiting list. It was Jan. 27. This called for handling the matter in a uniquely Washington way: paying to play. The Smithsonian's camps, it turned out, would give a registration head start to those donating "to the Smithsonian Associates at the Contributor level ($300 or higher)

It arrives, finally - summertime! An enchanted realm stretches before us: a landscape washed in golden sunlight; a languor of long lazy afternoons; flocks of birds and clouds of butterflies; nights cool and fragrant; mornings miraculous with dew. And a sudden dazzling explosion of color: blossoming trees, green-shadowed woods, flowering meadows and a vast overpowering cerulean sky. Summertime. And summer camp. During the first two decades of my life, the '30s and '40s, poliomyelitis was a frightful scourge made all the more horrifying in that most of the afflicted were children.

They won't be wearing swimsuits or shorts, but summer fun will be on their minds when representatives from 40 summer camps meet at the Tredyffrin/ Easttown Intermediate School on Tuesday for the third annual summer camp fair. Sponsored by the Devon Elementary Parent Teacher Organization, the fair will be from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the cafeteria at the intermediate school in Berwyn. "A lot of parents ask each other what their children are doing in the summer," said Judy Tilles, chairwoman of the event.

This summer 300 Philadelphia children will travel to Africa - without ever leaving their neighborhoods. For the first time, computers are being added to the curriculum of the Summer Urban Neighborhood day camp so that children can use high technology to study Africa and African American history makers. At a news conference in the offices of the NAACP in North Philadelphia yesterday, a coalition of local businesses and organizations announced plans to expand the curriculum and triple the number of participants, from 100 to 300. The S.U.N.

For generations of summer campers, the greatest act of love that a mother could perform was sending brownies from home. But times have changed. For those mothers with precious little time for homemade gifts, or for who perhaps have time but don't know what to send, there is Giftpak Industries in Jenkintown. For anywhere from $5 to $22, Giftpak Industries will assemble and send a care package to youths in summer exile. Contents of the package vary, depending on the age and sex of the youth.

To be gay and Christian at the same time can feel like conflicting identities, but a weeklong summer camp in Minnesota gives teens license to be both. "For some of these kids it's perhaps the first time in their lives they can be truly authentic," said the Rev. Brad Froslee, co-director of the Naming Project Summer Camp, a place where young people of all sexual orientations and gender identities can share their faith. The camp on Bay Lake near Deerwood, Minn., had been operating quietly since 2004 until it was featured in early March on Lisa Ling's new Oprah Winfrey Network show, "Our America.

While their students were off at summer camps, relaxing poolside, or at the Jersey Shore, 21 teachers gathered at Valley Forge National Historical Park last week to take part in a summer camp of their own, one that would strengthen their abilities to teach history in today's classroom. The Valley Forge Teacher's Institute brought historical authors Thomas Fleming and Gary Nash in to speak with the teachers this year, headlining a group of local college professors. In addition to time spent at lectures, the teachers were given guided tours of the park, and spent a day hitting the historical hotspots of Philadelphia.

The sun will come out tomorrow in Oklahoma , Annie , if you and 101 Dalmatians wish (Once) Upon a Mattress during a High School Musical . They do seem to run together, the countless musicals produced in thousands of summer camps nationwide. But Moorestown Theater Company's Summer Stage Camp is stunned, surprised, privileged, and pleased to be one of only six in the United States staging a Disney pilot. That's pilot as in a live stage production of a musical that has not yet premiered on the Disney Channel.

Fans knew something special was in the offing when director David Wain ( Wanderlust ; They Came Together ) announced the cast of his 2001 comedy, Wet Hot American Summer . It was a veritable Who's Who of comedy: Janeane Garofalo, Molly Shannon, Michael Ian Black, Amy Poehler, Judah Friedlander, and David Hyde Pierce. What's more, they were backed by a group of great actors including Elizabeth Banks, Paul Rudd, Christopher Meloni, and Bradley Cooper. A raunchy, sharp-edged satire that was equally affecting and nostalgic, the film was about the crazy goings-on at a summer camp in 1981.

HUNDREDS of jobs at city pools and summer camps are up for grabs tomorrow when Philadelphia Parks & Recreation holds its employment fair at Lawncrest Rec Center on Rising Sun Avenue near Comly in Northeast Philadelphia. The youth-focused job fair runs from noon to 2 p.m. with an information session at 12:30 p.m. Job openings include 800 lifeguards (16 years old and up) and pool maintenance workers (18 and up) for the city's 75 pools, as well as hundreds of summer camp jobs for youths 14 and up. In addition, the Philadelphia Youth Network will offer summer jobs specifically for youth from low-income families.

ATLANTIC CITY - Hillary Rodham Clinton said the nation's political leaders could use some time at adult sleepaway camp to learn how to cooperate across the partisan divide, and decried the nation's "huge fun deficit" during a speech Thursday to a conference of professionals who run children's summer camps. "The red cabin and the blue cabin have to come together and actually listen to each other," Clinton told about 3,000 attendees at the Tri-State Camp Conference, run by the American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey.

In this grim summer for the Philadelphia School District, there are a very few bright spots. On Friday, in a backyard in West Philadelphia, one shone brightly. Twenty-five School District students, all recent immigrants from African countries, stood in the sun, celebrating their shoring up math concepts, working on science projects, and practicing their English. Assetou Keita, 20, a student at Benjamin Franklin High, said she came to the United States nearly three years ago speaking no English.

Dozens of teenagers gather in downtown Camden each day, sleepily dragging backpacks - voluntarily - onto buses at 7:45 a.m. This is the summer? It is when your summer camp goes beyond theme parks, camping, and an obstacle course. Also on the agenda: homework, learning about slaughterhouses, and a trip to a landfill. Rowan University's Champ/Gear Up summer program isn't your stereotypical summer camp. Then again, it's not supposed to be. With the mission of supporting a path to college, the six-week summer program accepts dozens of middle and high school students from Camden each year, busing them from the city to day camp in an environmental center in Hammonton or the Rowan campus in Glassboro, where academic work is mixed with field trips and other activities that craftily combine learning with fun. "We're guiding you through, but the whole time, we're embedding in your mind the importance of school, the importance of learning," said Derrick Gallashaw, 34, a Champ/Gear Up staffer who helps lead the program.

Summer camp gives you a mental break. Sending your child to day camp might also provide a tax deduction. Local accounting firm Isdaner & Associates notes that day camp is a qualified expense under the child and dependent care credit, which is worth 20 percent of qualifying expenses (more if your adjusted gross income is less than $43,000), subject to a cap. For 2014, the maximum expenses allowed for the credit are $3,000 for one qualifying child and $6,000 for two or more. Be aware: overnight camp doesn't qualify for the credit.

The back of Hannibal's black bathrobe said he was "Da Most Electrifying One. " The emcee wore a heavyweight title belt on Friday afternoon and traversed the Philadelphia University basketball court with a microphone. He makes his home at Harlem's Rucker Park and was brought in to give the all-star game at the Reebok Classic Breakout a playground-like vibe. If he needed reason to use that microphone - likely, he didn't - Hannibal found it in Archbishop Carroll's Derrick Jones. The area's top basketball recruit soared for a two-handed alley-oop midway through the first half.

I've been greeting the mailman as if he were Brad Pitt these days. I practically attack him, and by now he knows why. Three of our seven grandchildren - Carly, Danny, and Emily - are away at summer camp. While they have faithfully promised to write, the grand total so far, nearly halfway in, is one letter from one granddaughter. Eleven-year-old Emily, suddenly tall and graceful and the wordsmith among our grandchildren, has sent a full description of life up there in the Poconos.

In its 10 years, Symphony in C's summer camp for South Jersey middle and high school musicians has provided training to more than 500 students. For two weeks each summer, the whine of violins, the clanging of cymbals, and the sounds of tinny horns have filled the halls of Rutgers-Camden. But this year, that rehearsal music sounds a little sweeter, and the coordinators and campers are relishing in it a bit more, knowing that the camp, two weeks of intensive training in orchestra and band instruments, almost didn't happen.